disquieting herself in vain, and suspected that others were suspicious, merely because she privately knew that they had cause for it. But this failed to encourage her for long; she felt she was right to be nervous. It was this that was the real cause of her thinking over domestic arrangements so carefully. She wanted to be prudent, over-prudent if necessary, and it was over-prudence that made her arrange that the house in Prince's Gate should be shut up on the day she went to stay with Mouse. Inconceivable and monstrous as such a suspicion would be, she wanted to make it impossible for Edgar to suspect that she was not going to Mouse. Such an idea would be wild and utterly baseless, but Lucia had observed that people who are in a suspicious frame of mind do imagine wild and baseless things. What a terrible thing suspicion was; it poisoned everything!
There was another precaution that ought to be taken, but it was harder to make up her mind upon that. Edgar probably knew that Maud was laid up and would not be going; he might, in his present state of mind, think over the fact that Charlie would be there. In that case, Charlie must not go. He must stop with Maud in town. That again was quite natural: he did not like to leave Maud.
Lucia scribbled a hasty note to him:
"Charlie,
"Edgar is not going to stay with Mouse, and as Maud is laid up it will be wiser for you not to go either. Come to lunch here to-day, and tell Edgar this, and leave again directly after lunch. I will arrange to see you somehow before I go abroad—we are going for a short cruise, E. and I, in about ten days—and tell you all about it. I am rather frightened.
"Lucia."
Lucia had this sent at once, and sat down again to consider whether it was in her power to do anything more to add further security. She felt that somehow suspicion had come into his mind, and that it had there grown and waxed fat, and it was necessary firmly and instantly to starve it to death. That cruise on the yacht was surely of the nature of starvation; so, too, would now be the days that must elapse before they set off. On the day he went to Brayton she would now necessarily be with Mouse, since the Prince's Gate house would be servantless, and Charlie, he would know, would not be there. Prudence and discretion could go no further.
